Workshop Summaries: Washington DC

Leading supply chain and risk experts gathered in Washington DC to attend the second of 5 workshops for the Supply Chain Risk Initiative’s second phase.

The meeting was attended by 57 representatives from both the Public and Private Sector including representatives from the World Bank, the World Shipping Council, and the International Air Transport Association.

The workshop commenced with introductions from David Heyman, Assistant Secretary for Policy, US Department of Homeland Security and Elaine Dezenski, Senior Director, Risk Response Network, World Economic Forum, which revealed the growing complexity of global supply chains and the overall goals of the Supply Chain Risk Initiative’s second phase.

Following this, the participants focused on 3 key workstreams:

Deepening our collective understanding of the risk and threat landscape

Working towards a blueprint for a resilient global supply chain

Improving transparency across supply chains

Findings

Workstream 1 saw all participants agree that the lack of transparency, disaggregated data, and scattered information are the top three problems evident in today’s supply chains.

Workstream 2 revealed the initial results from the World Economic Forum’s Risk Radar, an online survey which identified the top 5 risks and top 5 resilience factors across regional Public and Private sectors. In terms of resilience, the radar showed that Harmonized legislative and regulatory standards were viewed as the most important by the public sector. Whereas the private sector prioritized Improved information sharing between governments and businesses.

Workstream 3 focused on the need for mechanisms to connect and deliver information. It was viewed that information is available, but a barrier to transparency is that a trusted platform for its conveyance isn’t.